Archives from 2002-2006

Sep

14

Lair of the warmed tile

September 14, 2006

The rains arrived at some point last night, pattering insistently onto the roof and whispering Remember ussss? I don’t necessarily mind the gloom (since it’s been one whole day; ask me again in a couple months and I’ll probably grip onto your pantleg and sob incoherently about mushrooms and moss and melancholiness and please, for the love of god, take me to Arizona), but when JB let Dog back inside this morning and she gleefully tracked wet pawprints all over the floor, I heaved a sigh for the death of summer, and dug out the pile of gross towels that will live next to the back door for the next eight months.

Soon it will be as dark as my stingray-joking, bicyclist-generalizing heart in the mornings, and won’t that be a treat? Stupid daylight savings.

(Speaking of bicyclists, a few of you may be happy to hear that karma reared up and bit my Milano-padded ass yesterday. I got in my car after work, started it, and rolled backwards – just an inch or two! – before looking back and seeing a horrified man standing directly behind me, holding a small child in his arms. In my feeble defense it’s a crappy area to walk [it’s a narrow parking area that’s open to a high-traffic street] and he should have been across the way where there is a nice safe sidewalk, but uh…yeah, not so much with the stellar driving skills, there. I’ll just gather up these stones in order to store them in the basement of my glass house, shall I?)

I’m glad for the cooler temperatures in a way, because now I can totally shake up my wardrobe: instead of t-shirts and capris, now I can wear t-shirts and jeans…with hoodies. JUMP BACK. Also, I’m weirdly fond of that burning-dust smell the heater gives off when it hasn’t been run in a while. I also really like the smell of gasoline so it’s possible I have Issues.

Oh, and here’s something else that helps me welcome the onset of chilly, damp weather: we now have heated floor tiles in the new bathroom. When JB first proposed adding that, I gave him a big thumbs down; too expensive, too frivolous, how great could they really be, etc.

As it turns out, the answer is: really, really fucking great.

Our tile guy installed the wiring, which looked like this:

(Now would be a good time to share a photo of the finished tiles, but I don’t have one right handy. They’re sort of a warm beigey color, large squares with darker “cafe au lait” colored grout.)

The heating elements are on a timer, which we have set to warm up the tiles in the morning, and late in the evening. They feel pretty damn awesome, especially after padding around the house barefoot on cold wood floors. Last night, I noticed that Dog went shuffling in there to sleep, which she has never done before. Gah, the pets are going to make it into a lair.

The cost wasn’t too bad overall, or maybe it’s just that it’s frighteningly easy to justify all kinds of things when you invest in a house remodel. Having one thing be New & Improved makes everything else look shabby and in dire need of upgrading. You ask yourself, what’s one more expense in the horrifying financial grand scheme of things? This is a slippery slope of DANGER, and can probably eventually lead to liposuction.

Man, there sure are a lot of creepy, depressing stories in the news lately. Like this. And this. And jesus christ, this. I’m not sure the whole world-of-information-at-our-fingertips thing is really good for us, you know? Then again, some stories just put a smile on your face.

Sep

12

No common theme here today

Filed Under Uncategorized | 61 Comments

September 12, 2006

Today I took a piece of well-chewed gum out of my mouth and crumpled it into a kleenex, then a few moments later, having jettisoned a particularly relevant piece of data (TISSUE CONTAINS GOOEY CORE OF GUM) from my brain, I started to use it to blow my nose. I caught the smell of mint and remembered, oh shit, and pulled the kleenex away only to observe a filament of Eclipse “Polar Ice” connecting the wad of tissue to my nose. There I sat, in my office where I am theoretically a professional in charge of software marketing strategies, with gum stuck to my nose, and maybe 15 inches of gum-thread trailing through the air to the tissue in my hand.

Also, there is currently a grayish smear of sticky residue on the inside of our clothes dryer, since I apparently left a wad of tissue-wrapped gum in a pocket at some point, and cleverly ran it through the laundry instead of, oh, I don’t know, removing it and throwing it in the fucking garbage where it belonged.

It’s a sad day when you realize you are officially too stupid to chew gum without negative repercussions. I may need to switch to those flavored Listerine cellophane things that burn the crap out of your tongue.

:::

A couple of tasty links:

• Turn up your speakers and sing along to this one:
All we want to do is eat your brains We’re not unreasonable, I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes…

• McSweeney’s: …if the suburban neighborhood pool were in Deadwood. (Thanks, Amber!)

:::

Boring website housekeeping note:

If you’re interested in receiving email notifications when I update this website, I installed a plugin that purports to do just that. I’ve tested it on three of my own addresses, and it seems to work fine; it includes a short text-only blurb of the entry, and a link. I’m going to transition away from Notifylist.com in favor of this method, because while Notifylist is in fact free and there’s a school of thought that says you get what you pay for, it’s awfully damn inconsistent. Messages tend to get delayed for hours on end, or just disappear into the ether. The new system should be better, although you may have to whitelist my address so your spam filter doesn’t decide that I’m trying to sell you some fine Gev@lia coffee or transferring my Nairobi millions to your bank account or increasing both the length and width of your P-Unit.

You can sign up here.

:::

And now for a small rant:

The office where I work is located in a congested area; it’s positioned on a quasi-residential street that also contains coffee shops and miscellaneous retail stores. In order to back out of the parking lot and head in the direction of home, I stare bug-eyed out the back window, take a deep breath and hit the gas, then pray for survival as I flail to get my car shifted into drive and revved up to 47 MPH, since the people whipping around the nearby corner always make me wonder if this time they won’t bother slowing down before driving halfway up my large intestine.

A block away, I have to turn left through a busy intersection, yielding to oncoming traffic that’s either going straight, or turning right but refusing to stay in the righthand lane and instantly drifting into the left, which is the lane I’m trying to turn into. There is also an extremely active crosswalk to contend with, bristling with iPodded UW students, people wearing designer fleece vests pushing jogging strollers, and a smattering of elderly people just to make it even harder. It’s like some stressful reverse Frogger game, where I am trying to look in twelve directions at once in order to miss colliding with pedestrians, various assholes driving like they’ve got their laboring wife in the passenger seat and the head is starting to crown, and worst of all, the bicyclists.

I’m all for saving the environment and lowering air pollution and being a commendable citizen, but I swear to god the bicyclists in Seattle – at least the ones I contend with every work day – need to be force-fed a plate of veal then have their Croc-clog-wearing, soybean-eating, pubic-beard-sporting asses flattened by a giant Hummer.

I don’t know if they think they’re surrounded by an impenetrable Forcefield of Righteousness or what, but I see people flying through red lights, zipping across crosswalks blaring DON’T WALK (OR RIDE A BIKE, DIPSHIT), blasting past walkers while simultaneously yelling “ON YOUR LEFT” (which does exactly no good whatsoever, as it only startles the pedestrian and gives them no chance to get out of the way) and ringing their obnoxious little bells.

And maybe I’m just woefully uninformed, but aren’t bicyclists supposed to follow the rules of the road? Like a car? “Oh, right now I’m a car, but that light just turned red so I’m a pedestrian! Actually I’m above the law, as I have sausaged myself into a skin-tight jersey emblazoned with the names of companies who, hello, are not sponsoring me, as I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE. On your left!”

I hate having a close call with a bicyclist because 1) it scares the shit out of me, and 2) if anything, godforbid, happened, who do you think would be at fault? Even if Nick Numbnuts ran a light and was going the wrong way and actually rode directly into the front of my car while I was stopped, I’m pretty sure I’d be getting sued.

So, bikers of Seattle’s Montlake/Blakeley area, if you see a bug-eyed woman driving a white Corolla, give her a break, please. And for god’s sake, roll down that one dorky pantleg when you’re done riding.

:::

Baby photos? IF YOU INSIST: